The present invention relates generally to data structure software run on computers. More specifically, it relates to a method and apparatus for designing and creating reusable software components simplifying the use of third-party table data structures.
One of these third-party table data structures is the JCTable. The JCTable is a component which allows an application developer to place a grid or table-like data structure made up of columns of certain types in an application. One of the disadvantages of a JCTable is that an application developer must write a significant amount of computer code for each of the columns in a JCTable to make the table functional. An application developer may want a table or a grid in an application to hold and display information in a particular way that makes it easy for users to access and manipulate. For example, such a grid could be made up of several columns where each column contains one type of information such as customer name, product description, number of units, price, etc. and this grid can be one portion or component of a larger application. Of course there are many other uses for such a table in computer applications. The disadvantages of the JCTable is that the computer code written by the application developer must be rewritten for each new JCTable. Thus, for each table with an underlying JCTable, the application developer must create and set data types for each column one by one for each new table.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus for creating wrappers that are essentially reusable and can be applied to one or more underlying tables. The application developer would only have to set certain aspects of the column objects. These aspects would be those specific values of certain properties, such as the label of a column, so as to customize the column object to this new context.